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Friday, June 23, 2006

Ind. Gov't. - State workers' Internet access cut: some disciplined for viewing porn

Elisabeth J. Beardsley of the Louisville Courier Journal reports today:

The Indiana state government began restricting state workers' Internet access yesterday and some employees have been fired or disciplined after evidence was found that child pornography was viewed from work computers.

The move came a day after the state of Kentucky, in an unrelated move, expanded its filtering efforts to ban blogs, entertainment and shopping sites.

"Child pornography — you see those two words and you think, `Oh my God,' which is what we all thought," said Chris Cotterill, general counsel for the Indiana Office of Technology. "Child pornography is disgusting and it was taken very seriously."

A "handful" of employees were fired and several others were disciplined after the technology agency reported them to their human-resources departments for viewing child porn, Cotterill said. The agency also notified the state police, he said.

Gov. Mitch Daniels supports the decision to install a filtering system, which replaces what had been the employees' unfettered Internet access, said Daniels spokeswoman Jane Jankowski.

"He wants to assure that there's appropriate use of state resources and so he is fully on board" with the Office of Technology plan, she said.

David Larson, executive director of the Indiana State Employees Association, said the group agrees with the state's efforts to crack down on pornography and is not intervening with any employees who were disciplined or fired. * * *

As a first step yesterday, the state banned employees' access to pornography sites, and the next step will be to ban terrorism and hate sites, he said.

Further review might result in other restrictions, he said.

"If people are listening to Internet radio at work or watching videos that are unrelated to their job, that costs the state money and our intent is to block that," Cotterill said.

Indiana has not yet banned blogs, he said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 23, 2006 08:28 AM
Posted to Indiana Government